ANC is ‘driv­ing in­vest­ment out’

The ANC seems “in­tent on driv­ing in­vest­ment away” from South Africa with its 2019 elec­tion man­i­festo, un­veiled by Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa in Dur­ban this week­end, the Demo­cratic Al­liance said yes­ter­day.

The DA would ask Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Tito Mboweni for de­tails of the ANC elec­tion man­i­festo state­ments that the party in­tends to change the man­date of the South African Re­serve Bank (Sarb) and pre­scribe to fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions where they should in­vest the money they hold in trust on be­half of bank de­pos­i­tors, pen­sion and re­tire­ment fund con­trib­u­tors, pen­sion­ers and in­sur­ance pol­i­cy­hold­ers, DA spokesper­son Alf Lees said.

“The im­po­si­tion of pre­scribed as­sets is ex­actly what the apartheid regime re­sorted to in des­per­a­tion when they could not raise cap­i­tal in the in­ter­na­tional mar­kets. Now the ANC is to re­sort to the same an­nex­a­tion of pri­vate funds as in­ter­na­tional mar­kets hold back on mak­ing cap­i­tal avail­able to South Africa.”

In­stead of an­nounc­ing bold new ini­tia­tives to stim­u­late eco­nomic growth and job cre­ation, the ANC had de­cided to sim­ply “ex­pro­pri­ate” or­di­nary South Africans’ sav­ings to try to save bloated and cor­rupt state-owned en­ti­ties such as South African Air­ways and Eskom, he added.

“Clearly, Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa has not had the back­bone to stand up to the SACP/Cosatu [SA Com­mu­nist Party/Con­gress of SA Trade Unions] and has ca­pit­u­lated to their de­mands for these changes to the Sarb man­date and to im­pos­ing a pre­scribed as­set regime,” Lees said.

These changes would make the Sarb a bat­tle­ground as the de­struc­tive forces in the ANC and “its ally”, the Eco­nomic Free­dom Fight­ers, pushed the agenda to change the re­serve bank’s man­date.

“We urge the Sarb gover­nor to with­stand the com­ing on­slaught and to con­tinue to fo­cus on the ex­ist­ing Sarb man­date,” he said.

The changes would also re­sult in fur­ther down­grades by in­ter­na­tional rat­ings agen­cies, no mat­ter how much spin Ramaphosa put on these eco­nom­i­cally de­struc­tive changes, and drive away for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.

These “very fool­ish moves” would cre­ate more un­em­ploy­ment and mis­ery. There was lit­tle doubt that un­em­ploy­ment num­bers in 2019 would sky­rocket way be­yond the 10 mil­lion mark, Lees said. – ANA

The im­po­si­tion of pre­scribed as­sets is ex­actly what the apartheid regime re­sorted to when they could not raise cap­i­tal in the in­ter­na­tional mar­kets.